


Wood & Core

by esteoflorien



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-06
Updated: 2014-08-06
Packaged: 2018-02-11 23:43:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2087496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esteoflorien/pseuds/esteoflorien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Minerva McGonagall reflects on her wand at the reopening of Hogwarts. Canon through Deathly Hallows; not Pottermore-compliant.<br/>(First published on Tumblr in 2013.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wood & Core

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PerilouslyClose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PerilouslyClose/gifts).



She remembers the first time she held her wand. Its smooth handle had warmed to her touch; it had made a satisfying swish when she pointed it at Ollivander’s broken window-sign and murmured, “reparo.”

(Well, I suppose all great witches start out as little girls, Ollivander had said.  
Do you really think so? she’d replied, as tartly as she was able.  
Fir and dragon heartstring. A survivor’s wand, Ollivander had replied, and turned his attention back to her father.)

She knows the character of its wood intimately, now; it has served her well, this survivor’s wand. It had seen three wars (three, because schoolgirls fight when war comes to their doorsteps); educated hundreds of children; conducted a long career’s worth of research. How strange, to think that three such lives could be contained in wood and core.

And this, too, this the work of rebuilding: this it has done as well. It has levitated bricks - no, don’t do that, Hermione had shouted, we need you for the more important work - for the physical rebuilding, the laying of stone and the setting of windows, is just as important as the work that only she can do, standing at the center of the Great Hall, lending the castle her magic, recreating and strengthening the wards to keep its students safe.

Beside her, Hermione coughs. She’s hugged her wand against herself in her reminiscing. She can’t bring herself to care what the lot of them say. Albus called himself barmy on occasion, and he’d had a right long tenure as headmaster. And anyway, they’re waiting at the Hogwarts Gates - herself, Hermione, the Minister, the students and parents and seemingly all of Hogsmeade - and the gates will open only to her, and they can very well wait.

She reaches out a hand and touches them; she can feel the magic coursing within them. Albus could see it, she remembers; could close his eyes and picture it, all strands of gold and blue and red and purple and silver bound together, pulsing with power. But Albus was a very great wizard and she - well, perhaps she is a great witch, that’s what they say - is a survivor, and the feel of that power, is enough.

She could do it wandlessly.  
She could do it wordlessly, for that matter.  
But this was her very first spell, one she cast without a wand, when her brother locked her inside the linen closet in a game of hide and seek, and it seems right to say the word.

"Alohomora," she murmurs, touching her wand to the iron, held mesmerized by the magic until the spell is broken by the clamor of joy behind her.

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been a McGonagall fan - and have written McGonagall fic - since way before Pottermore. Consequently, I’m wedded to my own backstory for her, which has her born in 1930, so that she is of (young) Hogwarts age during the war with Grindelwald. I like the idea that the woman leading Hogwarts through Voldemort's return not only fought in the first war against Voldemort, but had her formative years shaped by the war with Grindelwald - a wartime child come of age post-war. As for seeing magic, I’ve always liked the idea that Albus could see latent or potential magic in the way that everyone else could see the signature of the spell once it was cast.


End file.
